Category: Development

Here we are! The time has come for us to say GoodBye for now, and we hope we “Speak” to you Later! Seems like we just enrolled on this exciting and one of a kind journey to creating our group blog – Big Data Big Responsibility – but time flies and we would like to summarize our key learnings, items of interest and feedback in our final post. We have certainly learned a great deal of new skills as a group and on an individual level, have had fruitful discussions with our audience, engaged by reading and commenting on each …

Did you know that Big Tech companies, such as META, are creating psychographic profiling algorithms on you? You did not? Well, neither did many of the users. This question was quietly aiming to be addressed during my previous post where I discussed the power of datafication and the challenges and choices of the users who many times, if not always, serve as the product themselves. First of all, let us define the term: `Psychographics`. “The term Psychographics refers to a quantitative method to describe and segment consumers on the basis of psychological attributes such as behavioral preferences, personality, beliefs, opinions, …

Whilst some hail the new digital economic era as an opportunity for people in the Global South to ride the wave of innovation to prosperity, others argue that what we see is a new era of digital colonialism. There are countless committed digitalisation fans who are happy to adopt any AI, smart or data-driven technology without a second thought and believe that digitalisation is the way out of poverty for millions in the Global South. The reality seems to show us something else. Rather than finding success, the Global South once again is in a position of permanent dependency, where …

Introduction In a previous post, I introduced how grassroots can utilise social media for poverty alleviation. Poverty alleviation is part of the well-known United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (United Nations, n.d.c.). Apart from these conventional problems, humanity faces increased and severe challenges in cyberspace. It is now much easier to collect data about individuals, groups, companies, and governments compared to the days prior to the invention of the Internet. Simultaneously, the difficulties controlling and regulating order in cyberspace cause a series of problems, including cyberattacks, digital economy divides, and impoverishment, among others. We discussed in our group podcast …

Who is in power of the Big Data today? The one who wrote it, the one who used it, the one who accessed, sold it or the one who bought it? The question can easily be taken as a good challenge, especially because there could be as many answers as there are internet users in today’s media sphere. In the current world of social technology progress, gathering the data through accepting cookies together with the Facebook customized ads that may influence people’s choices has become the norm, in a way, that is often being overlooked. The rights of people as …

“5, 4, 3, 2, 1 Sold Out! ” This sentence has echoed in e-commerce and social media in China during the last three years. The number of anchors, big or small, selling products live on e-commerce platforms and social media has grown like bamboo after the rain. Among them are a group of people who dedicate their popularity to helping rural farmers sell unsalable agricultural products that risk being left in the field to rot. Hence, this leads us to ask whether social media could be a new road to poverty reduction in parallel to the more conventional projects. Born …

The platform economy might be the next big thing but what are the impacts on working people in the Global South in this age of digital colonialism? In this is a short introduction we explore who benefits from increased digitalization in the developing world and how people on the verge of starting their own digital revolution can fight against the powers of the large tech companies. What exactly do we mean with digital colonialism? Just as the old western powers sought to gain economic, political and social domination by conquering new territory in the Global South, large digital technology companies, …

In the past, an End User License Agreement (EULA) may have been referred to as “the fine print” in contracts. Also known as a User Agreement, Terms of Service, or License Agreement (or any other of the many other names it goes by), a EULA is designed to give a person/consumer the permission to use/license a proprietary software or hardware. In exchange, a consumer grants the owner of the software or hardware, be it a company or other organization, any number of considerations, from monetary compensation to private information. So, what is it that we usually find in this fine …